


The Canary

by Anonymous033



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/F, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Origin Story, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-27
Updated: 2015-04-27
Packaged: 2018-03-26 01:06:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3831502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymous033/pseuds/Anonymous033
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The girl Nyssa finds alone on the shores of Lian Yu is dying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Canary

**Author's Note:**

> *Nanda Parbat is based in Tibet in this fic.

The girl Nyssa finds alone on the shores of Lian Yu is dying.

It’s clear that she’s gravely ill—perhaps from starvation; perhaps from prolonged exposure to the elements; perhaps from whatever happened before which caused her to be washed up upon the shores. Nyssa isn’t sure. She thinks about how easy it would be to snap the girl’s neck, but when she bends over, blue eyes flutter open.

“Please,” the girl chokes out before succumbing to her barely conscious state.

Nyssa doesn’t know _please what._ It would be useless to ask, as well, so she hefts the girl onto her shoulder instead and marches down the beach to the rendezvous point, the girl flopping limply against her back like a rag doll.

“Take her,” Nyssa says to her men when she reaches the little fishing boat. The men carry the girl on-board and lay her out across the deck; Nyssa sits, cross-legged with both hands wrapped around her knees, next to the girl, and barks out the order to set sail.

The sea is slightly turbulent that night, but the girl never stirs again. Torn between the fear of threat from a stranger and the desire to care for the vulnerable person, Nyssa maintains her post until they reach the mainland.

————————-

Nanda Parbat is at too high an altitude for those whose health has been compromised to safely travel to it.

Nyssa sends her men ahead to pay regards to her father as well as deliver news of their captive; she, on her part, stays in one of their safe-houses at the foot of the mountains and nurses the girl back to wakefulness. For the first two days, the girl is too weak to even rise properly—Nyssa finds herself having to forcefully tip medicinal soup down the girl’s throat. On the third day, the girl awakens with a start, panicked and terrified, and Nyssa ends up calming her down with false platitudes and not a small amount of lies.

Nyssa decides then that the girl clearly has enough to her to survive the ordeal.

She’s met with resistance and a displeased frown when she shoves a Chinese spoon under the girl’s nose.

“What the _hell_ is that?” the girl asks, her accent stilted—as if she’s held her tongue for a long while—but smooth and drawly like an American’s.

“Rice porridge,” Nyssa tells her. “I believe you would call it ‘congee.’”

“Looks like crap.”

“It’s healthy. It has chicken and cilantro in it.”

The girl looks at Nyssa askance, but opens her mouth anyway, permitting Nyssa to feed her the rice porridge. “Tastes better than I thought,” she muses.

“Seasoning,” Nyssa answers. “Not much—that would be bad for you. But if I’m encountering this many protests just from your observation of its appearance, I can’t imagine how hard it would be to get you to eat something which is tasteless.”

The girl huffs. “Could just let me die.”

“Is that what you meant by ‘please’?”

The girl gives her a puzzled look. “What?”

“When I found you,” Nyssa starts, feeding another mouthful to the girl, “you said only one word. ‘Please.’ Did you mean for me to leave you to die?”

“I’m not sure,” the girl answers quietly. “I don’t remember saying it. But why didn’t you leave me?”

“Because _I_ wasn’t sure either,” Nyssa responds. “A girl like you—”

“I’m _not_ who you think I am,” the girl interrupts in an unexpected snarl, her eyes fierce even though her body is wasted away. “Don’t _tell_ me you saved me ‘cause I’m worth saving.”

It makes Nyssa pause, this spirit that is simultaneously dark and fiery. So unlike anything she has ever encountered before is the girl that it intrigues her, and she lowers the spoon to observe the face in front of her.

“I don’t know what it is you have done which you think is so terrible,” she eventually says. “I have probably done worse, but that is neither here nor there. I saved you because you said ‘please.’ For whatever mercy you were begging, I could not bring myself to lay my hands upon you. And so, I healed you instead.”

“You were going to kill me?” the girl questions, Nyssa’s heart catches at the shock on her face.

“It would have been the best action to take,” Nyssa replies softly. “You were dying. I could have made it swifter for you.”

“But you didn’t.”

“And I regret that.” Nyssa lowers her head, turning it so that her hair shields her face from the girl’s view. “My choice has clearly caused you more suffering.”

“Hey,” the girl says, “it’s not on you.”

But it still feels like blame—until the girl’s fingers somehow creep their way onto the hem of Nyssa’s shirt and hang on uselessly. Nyssa glances up; though glazed over with tiredness, the girl’s eyes are bright upon hers.

“Thank you,” the girl says.

Once more, Nyssa doesn’t know _thank you for what._ She’s an enigma, this girl—she seems less fearful of Nyssa than anyone Nyssa has ever met. Dropping the spoon back into the bowl, Nyssa catches hold of the girl’s fingers.

It’s an alien sensation—it’s the first time in her life that she’s held anyone’s hand. But she doesn’t dislike it.

————————-

A week and a half later, the missive comes ordering her return to Nanda Parbat.

Nyssa reads the message, written in fluid Arabic script, from Ra’s, and then glances over to where the girl—whose name she now recognizes to be ‘Sara’—sits up in bed, staring at her and the man knelt at her feet.

“Rise,” Nyssa says, and the man stands. “I trust you will be making your way back up the mountain tonight?”

The man nods silently.

“Depending on whether or not I travel accompanied, I may take the train tomorrow afternoon,” Nyssa informs him. “Should you reach in Nanda Parbat before me—and you very well should, I might add—tell my father I shall arrive no later than sundown two days from now. He will receive my report then.”

With another nod, the man leaps out of the window.

Sara’s stunned gaze fixates on the spot where the man has disappeared.

Heaving a sigh, Nyssa makes her way over to the bed. She sits down gingerly next to Sara and says, “I’m afraid I have not been completely honest with you.”

“You don’t say,” Sara retorts drily.

“ _That_ would have been impossible to get you to believe had you not witnessed it with your own eyes.”

“You meant for me to see that?”

“If you witnessed anything you were not meant to, you would be dead.” Nyssa swallows the lump in her throat. “Perhaps that’s why I should have killed you anyway.”

“What’s going on?” Sara asks quietly, as if her life hasn’t just been threatened.

“Before I tell you—” Nyssa dithers. “It is unheard of for those not within my business to have seen my face and still walk away free, but I cannot take away what I restored. Should you leave the cabin right now and pretend never to have come across me, I will pretend you have been eliminated as a threat. But we may never speak again, and—if you would be so unlucky as to happen upon me twice in your life, the second time will not be merciful to you.”

“ _You_ happened across _me_ the first time,” Sara points out, as if semantics are the crux of the dialogue.

“And that is all on you,” Nyssa returns irritably. “Of all the stretches of beach you could’ve chosen to perish upon—”

“Well, then maybe I was meant to meet you.”

Nyssa stills, an eyebrow lifted. “You believe in Fate?”

“No, but I believe in coincidence,” Sara replies. “And something tells me what your dad—or whoever ‘my father’ is supposed to be—has in store for you if you go up that mountain without me—dead or alive—will coincidentally not be pretty.”

“Don’t worry about my father.”

“I worry about you,” Sara tells her, and it is strange that the words should leave a taste in Nyssa’s mouth. “You saved me even though you shouldn’t have. It’s gonna get you in trouble.”

“Nothing new there. I have always been told that I’m still too loose a cannon.”

Sara reaches up, her fingers tracing Nyssa’s jaw line. It sends tingles skittering across Nyssa’s skin. The first time Sara had tried to touch Nyssa, it had been so unexpected that Nyssa had almost broken her arm into two; now, Sara knows to move carefully, and Nyssa knows to accept the harmless contact.

Sara’s touch warms her.

Nyssa can’t remember the last time somebody touched her in neither an indifferent nor a cruel manner—if indeed it had ever happened—and it feels foreign to her, no matter what it means to Sara … but, for some reason, she enjoys it.

“Does he hit you?” Sara asks now, and so innocent is the question that Nyssa nearly laughs.

“Until I was thirteen. That was when I learnt to fight back,” Nyssa replies, adding with pride, “He was very impressed.”

“I don’t want you to have to fight back again.”

“My skills are continually in need of training. I assure you that even if I had not met you, my performance would eventually have required him to challenge me to another duel.”

“Well, I don’t want you to have to fight back for my sake, then,” Sara insists stubbornly. “So, I will go with you.”

“This isn’t a joke, Sara,” Nyssa tells her. “The instant you step into that world, there will be no leaving alive.”

“Good thing I was already dead to the rest of the world when you found me, huh?” Sara asks, and Nyssa falls silent.

The repetitive stroke of Sara’s thumb against her skin is distracting—and does it make Nyssa _want._ She wants this girl in her world, in her orbit; close enough to see and touch and experience.

She also wants this girl to be safe—away from her and from her League of Assassins.

But here Sara is, telling her of being already dead to the rest of the world. For once, Nyssa wishes she could give in to temptation. So, she nods.

“We need to give you a new name,” she tells Sara.

————————-

 _The Yellow Bird,_ they decide upon.

Sara has a strange liking for canaries, and Nyssa … Nyssa finds herself utterly bewitched by Sara’s lilting voice and gold-spun hair. It’s a compromise of sorts, Sara’s moniker, and it carries different connotations for them each; yet it’s satisfactory to them both, and that’s enough for Nyssa.

She doesn’t tell Sara that no one else in the League has had the privilege of taking up a name not assigned to them by either her or her father.

That is how _Ta’er al-Sahfer_ becomes Sara Lance’s new name.

————————-

Sara is, for some reason, awestruck by the architecture of the League’s headquarters.

She doesn’t voice her amazement, but it is evident in her searching eyes darting from door to tapestry to decorated alcove as she is led down the maze of hallways. Nyssa—already clad in the uniform which marks her as Heir—strides ahead, but looks back once in a while to make sure the absent-minded girl follows; though there are men behind them both, the vile creatures would not be gentle in ensuring Sarakept up with her pace, and Nyssa would rather Sara not be manhandled on her first day.

When she reaches the main hall where her father awaits them, she pushes open the doors and steps aside to let Sara enter. All wonder forgotten, the girl saunters up to Ra’s with a boldness Nyssa almost admires.

“Kneel,” Nyssa hisses, and Sara drops obediently onto one knee. Nyssa kneels behind her and speaks, “Father, I bring _Ta’er al-Sahfer,_ ” before withdrawing to the side-lines. She senses, more than sees, Sara’s eyes follow her, but refrains from acknowledging the girl. Now is not the time for them to establish a connection.

Ra’s circles Sara, taking her in: Evaluating her potential as a fighter, no doubt. She barely flinches when he embeds a _parang_ into the floor before her. He nods approvingly before commanding, “Get up.”

Sara rises to her feet.

“Can you fight?” Ra’s asks.

“I did some self-defence as a child,” Sara tells him honestly, “but not really.”

“No matter,” Ra’s answers. “Those who want to be taught can be. Do you want to be taught?”

“Is this a trick question?” Sara asks defiantly, and Nyssa’s heart leaps into her throat at that.

“You are gutsy, child,” Ra’s growls. “That boldness will come in useful, but I suggest you direct it towards someone who does not have the capacity to kill you.”

“Any one of you has the capacity to kill me,” Sara remarks. “I can tell by the abundance of knives lying around. But I’m not dead, for some reason, and that means maybe I have a chance here. I won’t ask you to teach me, because I know it’s not my choice. I will either have to learn or be served as dinner to the eagles I saw outside.”

“Perceptive, too,” Ra’s comments thoughtfully. “Very well. If you want to be taught, you must first learn to observe. Do it to the best of your ability, for _that_ is what I will require you to demonstrate in two weeks’ time. I will not kill the man who will have the misfortune of duelling with me now—but you? If you should be defeated by whom I choose to fight you in a fortnight, your life will not be spared. Understood?”

“Understood.”

Ra’s makes his way to a cleared area and beckons to a man off by the side. He never selects the same person twice, Nyssa knows; he would never allow his opponent the advantage of learning him that well. Still, the fight is one she has seen many times. She uses the opportunity to study Sara instead and takes in with wonder the growing excitement on the girl’s face. Sara seems enthralled, almost; as if mesmerized, rather than terrified, by the loud, clashing weapons. Ra’s easily defeats his opponent, as Nyssa can tell by the quick silence—she looks over to where the tip of Ra’s sword is pressed lightly into his fallen opponent’s forehead.

That’s when she hears it—the childlike giggle. “Whoa,” Sara exclaims. “That was really cool.”

For the first time in her life, Nyssa sees her father look bemused.

The feeling in her stomach is like freefall.

“Cool or not,” Ra’s says, quickly recovering, “You will have to learn to fight adequately before you may be initiated into the League. As I am not a giving man, you will have a limited time frame in which to do it. _Nimer_ here—” Ra’s gestures to another member of the League, “—will train you. The timetabling of your lessons is up to you: I find that having members dictate their own self-discipline is a good way of weeding out the weak ones. Use your time wisely. For now, you may be dismissed; I will see you again in two weeks.”

Sara moves towards the doors, and Nyssa follows suit; only when they have safely turned around the corner from the corridor fronting the main hall does Nyssa stop the girl.

“Are you _crazy?_ ” she whispers. “Were you _laughing?_ ”

Sara rolls a shoulder. “Your father doesn’t seem to mind.”

“You’re lucky he doesn’t.”

“Nyssa.” Sara frowns, catching hold of Nyssa’s hands. “I have nothing to lose. It’s okay if he kills me.”

“But—”

“But nothing.” Sara shakes her head. “I know you don’t want to see me go because you’ve spent two weeks by my side, 24/7, nursing me back to health when you didn’t have to. I know you feel like you’ve invested something in me. But _I_ invested a lot in myself, too, and it was thrown away when I made a stupid mistake god only knows how long ago. I’ve lived through a lot since and I’m the stronger for it, but I won’t lie to you: This fight? It’s _wearing_ on me. So, I can’t say that I came here with the same motivation for myself as you do. You want me to _live,_ but I just want to put one foot in front of the other. If I can do it, great! Yay for me. But if I can’t … I’m gonna die someday, anyway, and it doesn’t matter to me if that day is today.”

“I wanted to let you go,” Nyssa protests.

“And I wanted you not to have to bear that burden,” Sara replies. “If your father kills me, then I go out the way everybody does, and you’ll be okay. But I don’t know what kind of messed-up League he runs here, and the punishment against you for letting me go _alive_ wouldn’t have been light—I just know it. My life isn’t your cross, Nyssa. I won’t be the one to tell you that keeping yourself safe comes secondary to setting me free.”

“I don’t need to be kept safe. My father will not kill me.”

“ _He doesn’t need to kill you to hurt you._ Don’t you get that?”

Of course Nyssa does, but she almost wishes she were paying a blood debt instead, because it is the overwhelming concern in Sara’s voice which hurts her more. Yet, Sara stands so tall in her conviction—her hands so tight around Nyssa’s and her gaze never wavering from Nyssa’s face—that Nyssa feels guilt and gratitude wash over her in equal measure.

Her wellbeing means something to Sara.

Nyssa doesn’t know quite what to do with that yet—perhaps with a little training, the pointless compassion can be smitten—but Sara is new, and Nyssa can accept the flaw in the girl’s character for now.

Entangling her fingers with Sara’s, she tugs the girl down the corridor. “Let’s see what they have in the mess hall,” she tells Sara. “After that, I will show you to your quarters. You will share with seven others—my apologies for that—but the washrooms are private, and the lack of free time will diminish the impact of the lack of personal space. And then—there are my chambers.”

“You get your own room?” Sara asks curiously.

“I am the Heir. I have my own suite. Does that bother you?”

“That you have your own suite, or that you’re the heir to this palace?”

Nyssa pauses. “Whichever pleases you to answer.”

“Neither, then,” Sara decides. “The woman who force-fed me congee or whatever the heck it’s called in that cabin? That’s the real you. Whoever you are, whatever you have here; it doesn’t matter to me.”

“I’m a chameleon,” Nyssa tells her. “I don’t have a ‘real me.’”

“I think that’s what you’d like to tell yourself,” Sara says instead. “And I get why you’d want to believe that. I will probably want to believe that soon enough, too. But I also think that the woman in the cabin was beautiful, and whether that was the real you or not, I know there’s a part of you who cares.”

“Y-you think I’m beautiful?” Nyssa enquires, taken aback.

Sara squeezes her fingers. “As beautiful as you can be, Nyssa.”

————————-

Two weeks pass by quickly.

Sara works herself tirelessly during that time, even going as far as to beg Nyssa to train with her when _Nimer_ has retired for the night; Nyssa, for her own selfish reasons, acquiesces to her canary’s request.

The truth is that Sara captivates her.

Nyssa is no backward ignoramus: She has seen most of the world in her twenty-odd years. During her countless missions, she has come across the young and the old, the male and the female, the rich and the poor and the unapologetically corrupt; people of every creed and colour and status.

But none draws her in like Sara does.

She thinks it could be the girl’s laugh, perhaps, or that carefree smile Sara seems to reserve for her alone; there is also a part of her which thinks it could be the warmth Sara instils in her.

There is no doubt about it. The best moments are the ones just before they part for bed, when Sara, dead tired and dragging on her feet whilst tidying up their training room— _“It’s not your job, Nyssa. I didn’t pull you down here to fight me in the middle of the night just so I’d have someone to help me put away the weapons,”_ —still manages to find it in her to smile up at the Heir as the latter bids her goodnight.

Nyssa always walks away with a fluttering heart and the memory of Sara’s blue eyes which follows her into sleep.

That’s what makes it all the more difficult when, on the fifteenth day of Sara’s introduction to the League of Assassins, Ra’s al Ghul calls for her.

Since Nyssa hadn’t officially been involved in Sara’s training, she isn’t permitted to enter the hall this time; the resultant agitation moves her to pace back and forth in her chamber during the wait of a long, gruelling hour. The knock on her door comes eventually.

She wrenches it open, almost expecting Sara’s lifeless body to be dropped like a sack of potatoes into her arms for her to get rid of, only to find the woman herself beaming at Nyssa.

Relief escapes Nyssa in a harsh gasp, and in the blink of an eye she has Sara in an embrace—

She staggers back to meet Sara’s look of astonishment. “Excuse me,” she says, clearing her throat. “That was unbecoming of me.”

Sara’s answer is to survey the corridor. “Go in,” she says, shooing Nyssa back into the room; Nyssa does so with some confusion. Sara closes the door behind them and leans against it to study Nyssa intently. She says, “It’s okay.”

Nyssa opens her mouth.

“But your father isn’t happy about how close we are,” Sara cuts in before she can speak.

Nyssa furrows her brow. “How do you know?”

“He gave me this _look_ when I told him you taught me how to use the _shuriken._ ”

“Oh,” Nyssa answers insipidly.

“I mean, you _are_ the Heir, so I can see why—”

“You told me it wasn’t an issue for you,” Nyssa snipes. She doesn’t know how, but Sara’s words cut her deeply, as if she has never been told worse.

“It’s not,” Sara replies evenly. “Not for me. But that doesn’t mean other people in the League enjoy all the favouritism going on.”

“I see,” Nyssa says.

And she does, but that doesn’t stop the feelings of abandonment from seeping in.

When she was a child, she had been kept from visiting other villages within the mountains. _“All in good time, Nyssa,”_ she had been told. She had learnt from her daily tutoring lessons that the form of isolation she experienced was not all that common, and so had assumed that there had to be something dangerously wrong with her—something so _broken_ in her that she was forced to be stowed away from civilization and which made both her father and the other members of the League treat her with a great measure of disinterest. It wasn’t until later that she understood why people kept their distance around her. It wasn’t fear—or perhaps it was, but not when she had been younger—but respect for her ranking and her designation as Heir.

She was _meant_ to be raised as a lone wolf; _meant_ to be given her own space so that she could grow into her position as a leader; _meant_ to be taught that someone of her standing made no friends but plenty of enemies.

All she wanted was someone she could tell her secrets to.

“You wish forfeit our companionship, then?” she asks now, her own words searing her like one of Ra’s’ brands. “You will face no penalty if you do. The accusations of favouritism are to be blamed on my own oversight.”

“That’s not what I said,” Sara answers.

“ _Ta’er al-Sahfer,_ you’re not saying anything constructive,” Nyssa spits. “I fail to come up with a solution which pleases both you and the other members of the League.”

“I’m saying that if we’re gonna be friends, we’re probably gonna have to sneak around a bit,” Sara tells her. “Not that I can see you chillin’ on a coffee break with your colleagues anyway, but yeah, no chillin’ on coffee breaks with me. That doesn’t mean we can’t still have movie nights with popcorn and silly rom-coms.”

Nyssa frowns. “Are those metaphors?”

“Yes,” Sara replies with a laugh. “It’s not like I saw any DVD rentals on the way up. I just meant that we can hang out, but not where other people can see us.”

Silly woman.

Just like that, Nyssa’s tension ebbs. “That is achievable,” she concedes. “I will be away on missions a lot, but when I am home—and as are you—I shall endeavour to set personal time aside for … metaphorical movie nights.”

Sara grins. “Good,” she chirps. “Now, give me a proper hug.”

The lack of spontaneity makes it much harder the second time around, but Nyssa complies, and the welcoming yield of Sara’s body against hers relaxes her.

“I do believe this is the first time I have held another for a purpose that isn’t strictly necessary,” she admits.

“I know,” Sara mumbles. “I guessed as much. But hey, if it makes you feel any better, this could be an _I’m-glad-you’re-not-dead_ hug.”

Nyssa can’t decide whether to laugh or cry.

She settles for pressing her nose into Sara’s hair and inhaling deeply, relishing in the dizzying cocktail of emotions that fills her.

“Tell me, my canary,” she proposes. “How did you win that fight?”

————————-

“What’s your real name?” Sara asks once. “You’ve been calling me _Ta’er al-Sahfer_ ever since I got initiated, but you know what my real name is, and I’ve known you for three months and never heard you been called anything but Nyssa.”

“You were initiated into the League,” Nyssa replies. “I was born into it. What makes you think I have a real name?”

————————-

“How old are you?”

“ _Ta’er al-Sahfer,_ do you never stop asking questions?”

“C’mon, Nyssa,” Sara whines.

“My documents say I was born in May of 1985,” Nyssa capitulates with a long-suffering sigh. “I believe that makes me twenty-four this year.”

“You _believe?_ ”

“Dates are irrelevant, except in dossiers. Now, concentrate; it’s been six months, and your Arabic has not gotten any better.”

————————-

“You’re pretty well-adjusted for someone who’s never lived outside the League.”

“Thank you?”

“I mean,” Sara scrambles to explain, “you’re really smart and capable and knowledgeable. I’ve been to school my whole life and still failed terribly at it.”

“Not applying myself has never been an option,” Nyssa answers. “I had the best tutors my father could … hire, but regardless, had I failed to live up to a certain standard, they would have been duly disposed of.”

“Do you ever wonder who you would be if you lived a different life?”

“You say it as if I could even _fathom_ a different life.” Nyssa laughs incredulously—or perhaps hysterically, if the tears welling up in her are any indication. “I never had the choice to be a different person, and I would never wonder about a world I knew _nothing_ about apart from the short glimpses I caught during my times away. The only purpose your _unending_ questions serve, _Ta’er al-Sahfer,_ is to remind me of how different we are; how different we will _always_ be. I can do nothing to fix that, but if the idea is so truly repulsive to you—”

“No, Nyssa.” Sara drops her calligraphy brush to cradle Nyssa’s face. “It’s not repulsive to me. I’m sorry, I was just curious. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Nyssa can only stare at the blot of ink spreading outwards on the yellowed page. “Your curiosity chips away at all that I am. You can tell me about your Starling City and your parents and your sister, but I—I have nothing to share with you,” she confesses, lifting a hand to cover Sara’s on her cheek. “It’s not out of the lack of want that I can tell you nothing about what you purport to be the ‘real me.’ I wish you could understand that I am not a member of the League—I _am_ the League. Everything that they are is _all_ that runs through my veins.”

“That’s not true,” Sara replies. “You have just … yet to find yourself. But everyone has stuff that they like and dislike and things that they wish for or believe in. We’ll find out for you someday.”

“It couldn’t happen without my becoming contrary to my birth right.”

“Then maybe it’s time you spread your wings.”

“Your naïveté is what endears you to me,” Nyssa tells Sara with a sad smile, pulling Sara’s hands away. “But it is also what endangers you within the League. Don’t try to save me, Sara. There is nothing in me to save, and you will only bring upon yourself a world of trouble in the meantime.”

“Some people are worth the shot,” Sara tells her. “You, especially so.”

“And why is that?”

“Because you have more humanity inside you than you think you do,” Sara claims, shaking her head vehemently at Nyssa’s sceptical huff. “No, it’s true. And even if you think we’re too different, you’re still trying to reach out to me. I won’t let you reach out alone.”

There it is again, the sting at the back of Nyssa’s eyes. Nyssa lowers her gaze to where their hands still rest together in her lap. “If but only you believed in me for the rest of my life,” she murmurs to Sara, “I would be so happy.”

Sara says nothing, but smears a kiss across Nyssa’s cheek.

Nyssa thinks she won’t ever forget this moment.

————————-

It escapes Nyssa how easily she manages to fall for Sara.

The kiss changes things, at least for Nyssa. Sara seems, for the most part, unaffected; Nyssa knows she is not unattractive to Sara—she couldn’t be, given how much the other woman likes touching her—but Sara’s relative nonchalance makes her hesitate.

Nyssa is, after all, the different one.

The inexperienced one.

She may have seen the world, but Sara has truly _lived_ in it, and the idea that Sara could ever reach _that_ far back into Nyssa’s callowness to meet her is detestably laughable.

Nyssa craves, but she’s so scared.

She _yearns,_ but she’s so ashamed—

—So _foreign_ to her are the emotions that race through her heart and the fantasies that fill her mind late into the night that she fears even to name them. How could she possibly confess to Sara something which she couldn’t herself qualify?

So, she bites her tongue and prays for the thoughts to go away, but they only grow stronger instead, culminating relentlessly in the most explicit of ways that arouses and mortifies her alike.

The evening after she awakens for the umpteenth time to sweat-drenched bedsheets, she finally confides in Sara in the hopes that the other woman will give her reason to shelve away that uninvited desire.

But Sara….

Sara surprises her, of course; tenderly, patiently, with great care.

Sara always surprises her.

Later, as she cradles Sara’s lithe body close to her for the night, she recalls their conversation.

Sara had named it ‘lust.’

Nyssa thinks she might name it ‘love.’

————————-

The next few weeks is when Nyssa learns she doesn’t excel at tempering her emotions.

Her love for Sara consumes her soul, and it sends her and Sara’s relationship spiralling out of control; all too soon, Ra’s has caught wind of their liaison and has summoned them to him.

They show up hand in hand, separating only to kneel, and the furore on Ra’s face shakes even Nyssa.

She’s seen that look only once, when she was seven and had refused to fire her arrows into an eagle. _“It’s done nothing. I will not obey an empty instruction to kill an animal.”_ Her father, with a sword at her throat, had warned her that in the time she had taken to vacillate, her enemies would already have rid of her.

Nyssa had embedded the arrow into the eagle’s stomach.

But she has since learnt that it’s a farce, the expression on Ra’s’ face.

Though her father isn’t uncaring towards her, neither is he prone to any sort of display of emotion; as untrue are his looks of paternal pride or happiness, so are his calculative looks of anger.

He could intimidate her then, but not anymore.

“I am claiming her to be my beloved,” Nyssa announces. Sara’s gaze flits towards her, but Nyssa focuses on Ra’s instead; her father nods, his lips twisted.

“Keep her under your control,” he informs Nyssa. “I do not need to tell you that there is no egalitarian rule in this league. When you succeed me, she shall be your concubine and an ordinary member of the League—nothing more. Is that understood?”

It makes Nyssa’s blood curdle.

Still, she lowers her head and piously answers, “Yes.”

Her father sends them away; Nyssa leaves without looking back, counting on Sara to follow her. She sends her chamber door crashing loudly into the wall when she flings it open, but it doesn’t calm her down, not until Sara catches her by the forearms and holds onto her firmly.

“Breathe,” Sara commands, and Nyssa takes a deep breath. “Good. Now, can I let go of you, or do you still think you’d like to clear the table with a dramatic sweep of your arms? ‘Cause I gotta tell ya—I think I did a pretty good job on my Chinese calligraphy yesterday, and I wouldn’t like for you to destroy it before I’ve gotten the chance to properly appreciate it.”

The sound that escapes Nyssa’s throat is both a sob and a laugh. “Sara … you’re not my concubine.”

“I _know,_ Nyssa. Is that what’s bothering you? I didn’t believe a word he said.”

And suddenly, Nyssa feels so _stupid_ for letting her father get to her. She sucks in another breath and feels Sara’s hands around her wrists slacken; slim fingers curve around her jaw now, tapping a comforting rhythm against her cheeks.

“Don’t cry, sweetheart,” Sara tells her quietly, and she blinks away the tears she isn’t aware she’s shedding. “It’s okay. We’re all good.”

“He _humiliated_ you.”

“No, he tried,” Sara answers. “But he’s not the one I’ve sat with and worked with and gotten to know for the past year. He doesn’t get to tell us what our relationship means. Don’t play his mind games for him, Nyssa.”

Nyssa inhales shudderingly. “How do you always know the right thing to say?”

“Because I love you,” Sara replies simply, and Nyssa’s heart goes into freefall once more.

“ _Bahebbik kamaan,_ ” she says, drawing Sara into the enclosure of her arms. _I love you too._

————————-

“I think I could picture you opening a flower shop.”

“A flower shop?” Nyssa asks, amused. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Sara responds mulishly. “Especially with that smirk ya got goin’ on. Men would go in for a single rose and leave with a dozen bouquets because you were too charming for them to resist.”

Nyssa laughs. “More than a year with the League, _Ta’er al-Sahfer,_ and your head is still as much in the clouds as ever.”

“Hey, you gotta have contingency plans.” Sara shrugs. “Like, if the League were dissolved, what would you do?”

“Re-establish it?” Nyssa suggests.

Sara pauses. “Well, what would you do if it were permanently dissolved?”

Nyssa simply shakes her head and returns to her work. She’d like to be a teacher, she thinks, but God forbid that she could be so perverse as to touch the innocent with her bloodied hands.

————————-

“It’s Laurel’s birthday today.”

“Your sister?”

“Yeah. I haven’t seen her in a while,” Sara reminisces wistfully. “Not that she’d want to see me, since I was stealing her boyfriend the last time we talked. Oliver was a damned good lay, though.”

“ _Ta’er al-Sahfer,_ that is _revolting._ ”

“Truthfully?” Sara looks up at Nyssa. “I miss them all a lot. If I could rewrite history, I’d go back and be the bigger person; tell my sister’s boyfriend not to be stupid and that he should talk things out with Laurel.”

“If you rewrote history, you would never have met me.”

Sara gives her a bittersweet smile. “You’re the blessing in all of my darkness.”

————————-

“I love writing your name in Arabic. It’s so loopy.”

“If it is ‘loopy,’ you’re writing it incorrectly.”

“Well, forgive me for thinking your naked body isn’t the easiest of surfaces to write on.”

Nyssa snorts derisively, rolling onto her side and capturing Sara’s errant digits. “ _Ta’er al-Sahfer?_ ”

“Yeah?” Sara answers, offering her a dimpled grin.

“If you were getting restless with the League … you would let me know, wouldn’t you?”

Sara’s smile dims. “Why do you ask that?”

“Consider it a gut feeling,” Nyssa advises.

Sara curls her fingers around Nyssa’s. “Yeah, Nyssa,” she promises. “I would tell you.”

————————-

In the end, Sara breaks her promise.

One morning—she’s just _gone,_ flown from the window Nyssa had opened for fresh air. She’s left behind no note, but Nyssa knows where she is: The messengers they periodically send down the mountains for news had returned just a day ago to inform them of the Starling City quake.

Sara’s homesickness has been so strong lately that it’s tangible even to Nyssa.

Nyssa gives her beloved four months.

Ra’s dispatches her to the States after that, and Nyssa is only too glad to oblige; she burns still with anger over the fact that Sara had given her no courtesy of a goodbye.

The situation turns out to be much worse than even she had foreseen.

Once more, it’s her emotions that send the unwanted sequence of events tipping over like dominoes—and as she cradles her dying lover in her arms, Nyssa comes to terms with a terrible fact: The Real Her is a toxic, grotesque _thing,_ and it’s no wonder that her father should have wanted to bring her up in a cage.

Sara pleads for Oliver to spare Nyssa’s life.

Oliver saves Sara’s in a cruel twist of fate—that which he had failed to do the first time Nyssa had met Sara, he has now accomplished.

When Sara rises, revived by the miracle cure in the hands of the man whose sins had brought tragedy unto himself and Sara, and begs for forgiveness, Nyssa thinks back to that girl who had lain in the cabin and touched her cheek.

_“I don’t want you to have to fight back for my sake.”_

It was Sara who had taught her the meaning of self-sacrifice.

The words to release Sara from her allegiance spill unwittingly from Nyssa’s lips, but Nyssa cannot bring herself to regret it.

Sara had bought her time and happiness and an eternity of good memories only to ever ask for one thing in return—Nyssa won’t be the one to clip her beloved canary’s wings.

She just wished it would not also mean that she would grieve Sara for the rest of her life.

* * *

Crossposted to: [Tumblr](http://anonymous033.tumblr.com/post/117485737402/the-canary-a-nysara-nyssara-one-shot-pre-canon)


End file.
